Real Vim ninjas count every keystroke - do you?

Pick a challenge, fire up Vim, and show us what you got.

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$ gem install vimgolf
$ vimgolf setup
$ vimgolf put [challenge ID]

Played Challenges

Simple, Practical, and Common - 33778 entries

Simple things we do all the time should be able to be done with very few keystrokes, but sometimes I find something I need to do makes me go, "There MUST be a better way." This challenge is just a simple movement and entering text at a certain place.

  • Best score: 22
  • Best player score: 30
  • Position: #5142 / 7453
  • Number of attempts: 3
Swap values - 4647 entries

Well, swap the values...

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #1189 / 1276
  • Number of attempts: 1
One number per line - 18797 entries

Just give me the numbers.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #3183 / 3879
  • Number of attempts: 2
V to the i - 4824 entries

Input is 99 V's. Output is 100 i's.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1843 / 1899
  • Number of attempts: 1
From argument to object - 1524 entries

This task typifies those programmers endure while coding. This C-family pseudocode needs a function argument to be repurposed as an object call. Simply search and replace? Repeat a pattern of edits?

  • Best score: 17
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #411 / 463
  • Number of attempts: 2
Every other line - 2922 entries

AaAaAaA

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #340 / 706
  • Number of attempts: 2
Copy three lines - 2875 entries

If the site is up (by some miracle), make the text under every header identical.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 22
  • Position: #491 / 641
  • Number of attempts: 3
Extract argument from function - 2372 entries

The aim is to see if you can do some refactoring very fast.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #715 / 757
  • Number of attempts: 1
Search and Replace 0 - 5007 entries

Replace every instance of 'aaa' with 'xaaax'.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #1027 / 1631
  • Number of attempts: 3
comment and uncomment code inline - 1151 entries

It's very useful to be able to comment out a block of code in a quick edit. And likewise to uncomment the code. This operation often involves multi-line stanzas and even large blocks. With just line-wise navigation and insert mode this would cost you about 4 keystrokes per line. Master this hole of VimGolf and you'll quickly drop your key count in day to day Vim as well.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #48 / 328
  • Number of attempts: 6
Just the middle - 11506 entries

Delete the instructions at the top and bottom.

  • Best score: 7
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #3794 / 4217
  • Number of attempts: 2
Make HTML List - 1061 entries

Turn the comma separated list into an unordered html list.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 49
  • Position: #189 / 274
  • Number of attempts: 1
Todo list specification - 403 entries

The every item on the todo list must be done today. Modify the list to reflect that.

  • Best score: 37
  • Best player score: 39
  • Position: #114 / 181
  • Number of attempts: 3
For all cases. - 168 entries

In this case... change it! :) Watch the line.

  • Best score: 8
  • Best player score: 8
  • Position: #41 / 108
  • Number of attempts: 1
Stairstep digits - 407 entries

Remove the evens. Double the odds.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #97 / 149
  • Number of attempts: 1
Missing Library and a Typo - 920 entries

I forgot to add a c library, please add it for me. Also I'm bad at typing so fix my typo too.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #158 / 219
  • Number of attempts: 3
Hidden Message - 93 entries

Find the hidden message and replace all other characters with spaces.

  • Best score: 33
  • Best player score: 77
  • Position: #27 / 30
  • Number of attempts: 1
Adam's challenge - 1008 entries

Change both normal to bold and 4 by 2. Adam Wathan challenge this on twitter . He did it in 11 keystrokes on Sublime.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 21
  • Position: #152 / 275
  • Number of attempts: 4
Fiddle percentages into real numbers - 873 entries

Get rid of the '%' symbols and shift the decimal place. This is the easier version - all the columns line up.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #84 / 294
  • Number of attempts: 4
Combines all items - 313 entries

For each line that starts with the same number I want to combine its contents

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 9
  • Position: #62 / 140
  • Number of attempts: 2
replace 2nd column blanks with values in same column if blank - 242 entries

Where ,SOMELOGB and ,SOMELOGC replaces each /r carriage return if 2nd column is blank. The replace only happens if 2nd column is blank though and should replace up to the non blank row.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 26
  • Position: #81 / 83
  • Number of attempts: 1
Vice versa - 7968 entries

Little role switching.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #1770 / 2144
  • Number of attempts: 1
Paragraph sort - 450 entries

My large herbivorous mammals, Vim commands, and POSIX utilities need to be sorted separately.

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #103 / 125
  • Number of attempts: 1
Order and join - 985 entries

There's something special about the input order.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #115 / 260
  • Number of attempts: 7
Paragraph breaks - 527 entries

Swap the blank lines and the aaa lines.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #156 / 168
  • Number of attempts: 2
comments galore - 1073 entries

Basic comment reformatting

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 10
  • Position: #231 / 429
  • Number of attempts: 4
Scrambled numbers - 807 entries

Four is NOT 1. One is 1.

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 39
  • Position: #173 / 184
  • Number of attempts: 1
Align commas - 1097 entries

There are 15,000 aligning challenges on vimgolf.com, and they're all exactly the same. I hope this one is a little different.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 19
  • Position: #208 / 247
  • Number of attempts: 1
Add Go XML to structure tags - 182 entries

The Go programming language can directly map XML to structure fields. Add the correct XML tag after each field.

  • Best score: 23
  • Best player score: 33
  • Position: #67 / 73
  • Number of attempts: 1
Collect List - 4312 entries

Convert to comma separated list.

  • Best score: 12
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #836 / 1193
  • Number of attempts: 2
camel riding - 793 entries

add a prefix on some camelCase variables

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #141 / 281
  • Number of attempts: 5
I forgot quotes - 16061 entries

Oops.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 18
  • Position: #3231 / 4195
  • Number of attempts: 2
-a-b-c- - 3216 entries

Put hyphens everywhere.

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 17
  • Position: #986 / 1138
  • Number of attempts: 1
Do you demand a shrubbery? - 1164 entries

Use :redir and crush the emacsgolfers.

  • Best score: 15
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #60 / 301
  • Number of attempts: 10
Don't know what this is - 2024 entries

Replace contents of brackets with matching number of spaces. Don't ask what the format's supposed to be.

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #520 / 586
  • Number of attempts: 2
A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 ! - 10699 entries

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014 !

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 11
  • Position: #1148 / 3695
  • Number of attempts: 4
Letter case trickery - 1644 entries

This file is in a downright esoteric format, consisting of hexadecimal numbers, non-hexadecimal keywords, and "Z" indicating end-of-line. Make the hexadecimal numbers lowercase.

  • Best score: 9
  • Best player score: 13
  • Position: #412 / 520
  • Number of attempts: 1
quotes inside quotes - 3182 entries

taken from tip 85 of the very good book 'Practical Vim: Edit Text at the Speed of Thought' ! I'd be interested what people use :)

  • Best score: 14
  • Best player score: 14
  • Position: #274 / 1085
  • Number of attempts: 4
Vertical Limit - 2569 entries

transform a succession of one word lines to a an array of strings

  • Best score: 21
  • Best player score: 24
  • Position: #302 / 761
  • Number of attempts: 3
replacing each line of a block selection - 3005 entries

replace each line's ../assets/js with /javascripts

  • Best score: 18
  • Best player score: 23
  • Position: #481 / 779
  • Number of attempts: 6
switch variable - 5085 entries

how fast can you switch two variable ?

  • Best score: 11
  • Best player score: 16
  • Position: #1584 / 1750
  • Number of attempts: 1
Make it more readable - 2009 entries

Insert blank lines to make it more organized and readable

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 15
  • Position: #301 / 652
  • Number of attempts: 4
Simple text editing with Vim - 13122 entries

Make the pairs of lines match up by making each second line same as first

  • Best score: 13
  • Best player score: 37
  • Position: #3571 / 3774
  • Number of attempts: 1
Reformat/Refactor a Golfer Class - 7247 entries

A simple case of removing unneeded code and fixing broken indentation.

  • Best score: 10
  • Best player score: 48
  • Position: #1355 / 1789
  • Number of attempts: 1
Stop and think
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entered into 44 challenges

contributed 0 challenges